CHAPTER XI.

SOME SPECIALLY ILLUMINED IN BRITAIN.

THE later illumining agency of Christianity has increased towards its full power very gradually. And also, as changes in connection with religion are generally viewed for some time with distrust, even the illumined themselves have been very slow to acknowledge that a better guiding agency exists at all. Yet in this case the change is just one of clearer perception, involving the removal of errors of vision which were only disturbing. The same objects appear as before; but they are far more truly comprehended, and they are no longer accompanied by shadows which are mistaken for real things.

One group of British theologians have notably perceived sacred facts through the more subtle guidance of Christian Influences, while remaining themselves hardly aware of being no longer guided by Literalism.

At the head of the group are three, namely, Thomas Erskine, John Macleod Campbell, and Alexander John Scott. These were three personal friends, all Scotchmen; and they spoke almost, as it were, with one voice.

Erskine was born in 1788. An advocate by profession, he attained to a leisure admitting of much theological study, through the inheritance of a family estate named Linlathen. He wrote a number of short treatises, of which the earliest was published in 1820. After his death his maturest thoughts were given to the public in a collection of essays entitled "The Spiritual Order and other Papers," which he had desired to have published. He died in 1870.

Campbell was born in 1800. He was ordained minister of the parish of Row on the Firth of Clyde in 1825, but was deposed by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1831, on the ground of his having taught that the pardon of God is (in some

1 It may be hardly necessary to state that this chapter makes no claim to direct knowledge of the theologians whom it introduces, such as may still be available to many by means of relatives or others who had personal acquaintance with them. Their testimony to sacred truth is gratefully interwoven here, as gathered from their works and memorials, which it is now the privilege of the general public to possess.

sense) for all, and that an assurance1 of personal salvation is closely connected with faith. He was afterwards for many years minister of an independent congregation in Glasgow. He published, among other works, The Nature of the Atonement, in 1856. He died in 1872.

Scott was born in 1805. Like Campbell, he studied for the ministry of the Established Church of Scotland, and became a licensed preacher. After some time, however, on being offered the charge of a Scotch congregation in England, he openly refused to give the required signature to the Church's Confession of Faith. He accordingly came into collision with the authorities, and was ejected from his office by the same Assembly as deposed Campbell. Afterwards he became eminent in England as Professor of Philosophy in Owens College, Manchester. He has left some fragments, in which his theological views are clearly and forcibly stated. He died in 1866.

In the writings of all these three men, one thought is continually recurring. It is this: that it is wrong say, God loves man in consequence of the atonement made by Christ, and right to say, rather, the

to

1 Significance of this point indicated in Memorials of Campbell, ii. 17-18.

atonement was made in consequence of the fact that God loves man.

At first sight, this seems just one of those abstract considerations of which the old Theology was full. And the opinion that it is so may find support from the writings of Erskine and Campbell in general, in which there is much that seems little removed from the old abstract way of thinking. But on further examination, the thought will be seen to be an indication of the great change of consciousness as to standing-ground, which was specified in last chapter. It is an indication of the discovery that God is near, and that He may be directly perceived.

When this is discovered, and then alone, one learns that God indeed cares for all, and that His care is eternal and unchanging; that, accordingly, nothing was ever needed to induce Him to love His feeble and lost children, because He had never ceased to love them.

That this was at the back of the thought of which those three theologians made so much, becomes the plainer when one notices that they all showed themselves alive to the true content of the idea of revelation. Erskine, even in his earliest period, emphatically pointed to a centre of faith which was not in a 'particular act,' but in "the character of God

revealed in Christ-the character of holy love-consuming sin, and saving the sinner."1 And his earliest book was directed towards showing that, at least, part of the evidence for the truth of a revelation was to be found in the response of the soul itself.2 So Campbell, starting with the atonement regarded as a historical event, claimed for it that it revealed that God is love.' And he brought out that 'conscience' might apprehend not only man's sinful state, which 'revelation' asserted to exist, but also the truth of the "forgiving love of God," of which there is "manifestation "4 in the atonement. And, once more, Scott, speaking of the Scriptures and putting side by side with them other means of revelation, said: "Thereby God utters His Being to us, as an author makes known his existence and form of mind by his book; and as a friend by his letter expresses the state of his heart towards us, and seeks communion with ours." And he also was alive to the importance of the part taken by the spiritual understanding' or 'insight' of the receiving mind.

5

The three developed their thoughts along lines on which we cannot stop to follow them. One formal

1 Unconditional Freeness of the Gospel, pp. 43, 169, 3rd edit. 2 Remarks on the Internal Evidence, etc. (now republished).

3 Nature of the Atonement, p. 62.

+ Ib., ch. i.

5 Discourses, p. 35.

6 Ib., pp. 54, 55.